Heritage et AL

Image: Marilyn Portman behind the microphone, 2022. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections - Ngako: Podcast series. Photographer: Benjamin Brooking. Auckland Central City Library has been a vibrant venue for live music for decades. Among its most celebrated performances are the renowned Heritage Concerts, which have captivated both our local communities and daily visitors to the library. Now in its twentieth year, this beloved concert series owes much of its success to its steadfast curator, Marilyn Portman. Marilyn has been a librarian for close to 40 years, and for many of those years has specialised as a music librarian. She is a taonga - a treasured member of staff with incredible musical knowledge and many recitals and events under her belt. Recently, she shared a fond memory from the early days of the Heritage Concerts - a moment that marked the beginning of something special: “A seed was planted in 2002 when Kowhai Baroque presented ‘An Afternoon of Italian Music and Poetry’ in...

Image: Penny Vernon with her twin lens camera, 17 July 2025, photographer Jane Wild Robin Hyde’s distributed archive continues to grow. Sometimes the photograph, the book or the letter takes its own time. In this case a photograph which features Robin’s son Derek Challis took over forty years to be developed. The story behind the photograph demonstrates the way documentary heritage can surface beyond the formed collections. This is particularly apparent when an archive is collected after the subject’s death. In this case Iris Guiver Wilkinson (1906 – 1939) now better known as Robin Hyde has left a trail of letters and photographs across the country and beyond reflecting her vivid and tumultuous life. More letters continue to be found and through digitisation and transcription they add to the distributed archive in collections, both public and private.  Image: Derek and Ellynne (Lynne) Challis with Jean Sweetman, Grey Lynn, 1980s, photographer: Penny Vernon The photo had been waitin...

Image: School children on Apirana Ave, Glen Innnes, 1989. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections 273-PAG002-10. Photographer: Stuart Page In 1990, Auckland Libraries launched a large-scale oral history project to commemorate Aotearoa New Zealand’s sesquicentennial anniversary. The aim was to preserve the voices of Aucklanders and capture the city's history through their lived experiences. This particular series focuses on Glen Innes, highlighting its unique social, cultural, and historical narratives. The oral history excerpts below highlight key themes such as the everyday social and cultural life of Glen Innes and its surrounding market gardens, mana whenua, and the communities that later moved into the area. These excerpts have been curated for the exhibition 'Glen Innes: A Century of Community and Change,' held at Te Oro Music and Arts Centre from 6 September 2025. More details of the exhibition can be found here . 1. Elizabeth Smith  Elizabeth was interviewed by Je...